NHT Blog

It’s okay to admit that you might be sick of hearing the word ‘collab’ at this point.  Admittedly, it does get thrown around an awful, awful lot these days.  It has for a while now, actually.

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but unless and until a synonym replaces it, you’re going to have to simply accept that that is one word that is not going to go away any time soon.  Although I have to tack onto that, nor should it!

Three days ago, I was the feature on an AMA (Ask Me Anything) that the San Francisco Writers Conference put on (via Zoom).

Every so often the planets will align for music creators, and they’ll land on something that checks the boxes.  For me, “Nitelite” by Seth David Branitz could very well be in that discussion.

And good for him, by the way, since the casual music listener has no idea about the countless songs that get written, feel really good, but don’t end up going anywhere.  Thus, it’s all the more reason to celebrate when a song lands as the writer and/or artist hoped it would.

For more than a dozen years now I have seen and been reminded of the importance of managing expectations.  In fact, it has become so prevalent in my life that not only do I give it out as one of my top pieces of advice to people, but I even did a search on this very website to see if I’d already written a blog about the topic.

Around March or so, I start challenging people, “How’s that New Year’s resolution of yours doing?”  And it’s not even out of the realm of possibility that I bring it up again in May.  The point being that you – duh – need to stay with it, regardless of what goal you’d set.  After all, you wanted change as the new year started, so what made you decide it wasn’t important enough to stick with it?

For all the glass-half-empty opinions that get expressed about the music industry, there are good things happening for those who see the glass instead as being half full.

There’s the old expression, “I was in the right place at the right time” and I see lots of benefit in looking at the second part of that statement.

If you have landed on this blog post, you've probably heard the terms public relations and advertising interchangeably (and now you're wondering what's right for your brand). While both are valuable tools for growing your business, they serve very different purposes. Understanding when to use PR, advertising, or a combination of both can help you make smarter marketing decisions and get the most from your budget.

What is Public Relations?

I think I’ve written before at some point in this weekly blog about the fact that there are people that you just expect everyone to know, when in fact, you’ll run across folks who you’ll find yourself saying, in amazement, “You don’t know who John Cena is?!”

Last week was interesting not only for sports but some might argue that pop culture was impacted too.

I’m referring to NBA superstar Lebron James choosing to sign with the Philadelphia 76ers.  And the indicator that people outside of basketball – heck, outside of sports – were interested was the reactions posted on social media by celebrities not connected to the game that “The King” plays.